134 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



tent, into open insubordination as we progressed west- 

 ward, or from home ; he became submissive and somewhat 

 servile as we returned to the coast, and when he took 

 leave of me he shed a flood of crocodile's tears. 



Mohammed is the Rish Safid, or greybeard of the 

 caravan, and without a greybeard no eastern caravan 

 considers itself en regie. Of these indispensable vete- 

 rans I had two specimens ; but of what use they were, 

 except to teach hot youth the cold caution of eld, I 

 never could divine, — vieux soldat, vielle bete. In the civi- 

 lised regiment age is not venerable in the private, as every 

 grey hair is a proof that he has not merited or has for- 

 feited promotion ; so in the East, where there is a paucity 

 of competitors in the race of fortune, the Rish Safid 

 of humble fortune may be safely set down as a fool or a 

 foolish knave, and though his escort is sought, he gene- 

 rally proves himself to be no better than he should have 

 been. 



Mohammed's body is apparently hard as a rock, his 

 mind is soft as putty, and his comrades, disappointed in 

 their hopes of finding brains behind those wrinkles, 

 derisively compare him to a rotten walnut, and say 

 before his face, " What ! grey hairs and no wits ?" He 

 has invested the fifteen dollars advanced to him as outfit 

 by Lieut.-Col. Hamerton, in a slave-boy, whom pre- 

 sently he will exchange for a slave-girl, despite all the 

 inuendoes of his friends. He was at first a manner of 

 peace-maker, but soon my refusal to enlist and pay 

 his slave as a hired porter acted like Ithuriel's spear. 

 This veteran of fractious temper and miserly habits 

 ended, in a question of stinted rations, by drawing his 

 sabre upon and cutting at his Jemadar; an offence 

 which I was compelled to visit with a bastinado, inflicted 

 out of the sight of man by the hand of Khudabakhsh. 



